1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to processing systems and processors, and more specifically to techniques for circuit design verification.
2. Description of Related Art
Computerized devices control many aspects of life—from writing documents to controlling traffic lights. However, computerized devices are bug-prone, and thus require a testing phase in which the bugs should be discovered. The testing phase is considered one of the most difficult tasks in designing a computerized device. The cost of not discovering a bug may be enormous, as the consequences of the bug may be disastrous. Additionally, a bug in hardware or firmware may be expensive to fix, as patching it requires call-back of the computerized device. Hence, many developers of computerized devices invest a substantial portion of the development cycle to discover erroneous behaviors of the computerized device.
During the development cycle of a circuit, the functionality of the circuit may be analyzed using functional verification. Functional verification may be performed using a simulator, such as Hardware Descriptive Language (HDL) simulator, which provides a software simulation of the behavior of the circuit. Additionally or alternatively, an acceleration platform, also referred to as an “accelerator” or a “hardware accelerator”, may be utilized to perform functional verification. As the accelerator is implemented in hardware it is much faster than a simulator. On the downside, there is a reduced visibility to the value of each signal in the circuit design during the simulated execution by the accelerator with respect to a simulator.